IoT + Cloud Growth = Greatest Cybersecurity Risk

The Internet of Things (IoT) has seemingly endless potential. From smart homes to connected cars2014 to sensors monitoring traffic and natural disasters, IoT is set to make our world a safer and more convenient place. But with this new wave of technology comes new risks. As the number of devices connected to the cloud increases, so do opportunities for hackers.

Research conducted by IoT Analytics projects IoT active connections to grow 18%, with 14.4 billion active endpoints, in 2022. This follows an 8% increase in 2021 with 12.2 billion active endpoints. As significant as this growth is, it's being hampered by the persistent chip shortage. 

According to Gartner, cloud computing is projected to grow 20.4% in 2022. This continued growth is being driven by infrastructure, platform, desktop-as-a-service, and the need to connect to software and data from anywhere.

The proliferation of IoT devices and cloud computing results in an exponential expansion of cyber risk and an increase in cyber attacks.

Three years ago, organizations typically had a clear perimeter with on-prem, cloud and hybrid, BYOD, and enterprise-governed devices. Today, the network perimeter has disappeared, employees are widely distributed, most large companies are multi-cloud, BYOD is still popular, enterprise-governed devices are on various networks across millions of cloud applications, and credentials and secrets are everywhere.

The Security-Adoption Paradox

More than 80% of breaches are due to a failure to secure passwords, credentials, and secrets -- many of which are in code, stored on computers, and on sticky notes. There is no visibility, security, or control over employee passwords, credentials, and secrets on every device, application, and system.

Here's the paradox: The more secure the solution, the fewer employees want to use it.  The less they use it, the less secure their organization is.

The Solution to the Paradox

Enterprises need a cybersecurity platform that enables organizations to achieve full visibility, security, and control across every user on every device in the organization. Such a platform enables zero-trust security and compliance by unifying enterprise performance management, secrets management, and privileged connection management across every device, platform, and service.

Privileged credentials are some of the highest-value targets for criminals. As such, companies need a cybersecurity platform that secures infrastructure secrets like API keys, database passwords, access keys, certificates, and any confidential data.

A secrets manager will secure the environment and eliminate secret sprawl by removing hard-coded credentials from source code, config files, and CI/CD pipelines. Admins can manage access rights and permissions with role-based access controls. Secrets can be integrated into infrastructure, containers, and build systems. The platform will enable the consolidation of secrets, enable them to be audited, as well as automatically rotate access keys, passwords, and certificates.

A connection manager enables DevOps and IT the have easy and highly-secure access to RDP, SSH, database, and Kubernetes endpoints through any web browser. An agentless remote desktop gateway can be installed in any on-prem or cloud environment. It should be easy to implement on the network -- both on-prem and in the cloud. Then easily connect to a machine from anywhere via a web browser. The leading connection managers are designed to be integrated with many third-party systems and protocols.

Takeaways

The right cybersecurity platform will also help companies begin to address security solution sprawl since more robust platforms will help eliminate the need for at least a few of the 75 security solutions the average company is employing today.

Organizations can harden security by adopting zero-trust remote access for their distributed workforces with granular visibility and control across all endpoints. This is enabled with the right cybersecurity platform.